Battlestar Galactica Episode 108: Flesh and Bone

A pretty interesting episode this week. As we start, President Roslin has a dream where she's running from Galactica's Marines. She comes across a Cylon, Leoben, who tries to tell her something, but vanishes. When she wakes up, she finds that a Cylon has been found in the fleet: Leoben. He was found hiding in one of the ships and is taken prisoner. He claims that he hid a nuclear bomb on one ship, but wouldnt' tell where it was. Adama assigns Starbuck to interrogate the prisoner. She beings a fairly brutal torture of Leoben, forcing him to conceed the fact that he's no better than any human, through various means. She tells him that he can turn off his pain sensors, but then she'd be smarter than he was. She orders beatings on him, and a water torture. Meanwhile, Boomer on Galactica goes to Baltar to be tested as a cylon. She fails, but he tells her that she passes. On Caprica, the other Boomer tells Six and Doral that she and Helo slept together, and they go on the run again. Back with the Interrogation, things are not going well, and Leoben isn't talking. He claims to be god and to see the future, and tells Starbuck that they will find Kobol, which will lead them to Earth. Adama in the mean time tells Tigh to order all of the ships in the fleet to move away from each other, in case there is a bomb.Roslin comes in, and is apparently appalled at his treatment, and talks to him, promising him sanctuary if he tells her where the bomb is. He tells her that there is no bomb. He made the story up because he was afraid of dying- the fleet was too far away for his consiousness to be transfered. He also tells her that Adama is a Cylon. She orders him to be thrown out an airlock, saying that he's a machine and he has no rights. Leoben is tossed out, exactly like in her dream.
This episode was pretty interesting, and really explores the boundery between human and Cylon, something that really hasn't been done yet to any great extent. One of the main things is the fact the Cylons are perfect replicas of humans, down to blood, sweat and pain. It's commented on in the first part of the episode, and they use this to their advantage.
One of the things that Starbuck emphisizes in her torture is the fact that the Cylons are evil and that they're no smarter than humans. She proves this by having a marine smack him in the head a couple times, and tells him that a regular human would have started crying, screaming or cursing by then. She tells him that he can turn off the pain, but he'd be a false person.
She also theorizes that they're two far out, and he's afraid that he won't be making the transfer if his body dies, and he later confesses that to President Roslin before he is killed. (I'd sill make a jump with the fleet just in case)
Balter's scenes were pretty interesting, and it looks like his Cylon detector is up and running, although he hasn't told anyone that Boomer is a Cylon yet. That will cause some problems down the road. There were some funny comments though that he says, like "You couldn't be more human if you tried." I thought that was a paticularly striking line.
This was also a fairly violent episode, with some fairly brutal beatings taking place with Leoben. He was bashed over the head a lot, and then almost drowned several times in a bucket of water in an attempt to get him to talk. It was interesting that that method didn't work, but when Roslin talked to him, it did work. I guess it's a little bit of a showcase on the Humans.
There was quite a bit of religious talk as well, some of which I didn't hear, but stuff that's going to come into more argument later on.
As far as the story goes, I think that this is the closest that we'll probably get to a standalone episode, but this is a paticularly heavy one, with lots of implications for what's coming up. For example, Leoben says two things that will come into more importance in the next episode, and later in the series. 1- Concerning Adama, who he claimed was a Cylon, and two, the fact that they WILL reach Kobol by the season ender.So a pretty cool episode. Can't wait for the next one.